[protoax]

I think I understand your point and agree with the hype aspect, but statistically how can they be statistical outliers? On a broad annual basis they’ve beat everyone 10+ times in a row or whatever the number is. That’s far more than statistically significant. How can 1 fund beat 10,000s 10 times in a row and be just an “outlier” with no rhyme or reason to their performance? Please correct me if I’m misunderstanding.

[GDC7]

The fact that it's statistically significant doesn't mean that the people involved in the event know what they are doing.

G-intense tasks or stuff that has a g-intense reputation is often put on a pedestal but it's essentially the same as asking Tom Brady why is he in the Super Bowl every year.

He'd answer something like teamwork, good work environment and hard work...which is the exact same stuff that Simons answers when he's asked about Medallion.

It's not like the both of them have really a clue. If they did, they'd be able to fail on purpose , get back being nobodies and then regroup and get back to the top again. Repeat the cycle 10-20 times to be sure about it.

Don't know about Brady, but Simons as a man of science would try if he was 100% really sure about what's the formula for success.

In reality , not only he doesn't do that, but he pulled the plug on Medallion in 2007 during the meltdown, it's in the book.

[protoax]

What you're saying really makes very little sense to me. The strategies change constantly and are arb'ed away. Every year they essentially do start from scratch, aiming to beat the market which they do massively. But they aren't starting from scratch because they're still using their statistical arbitrages and tools? That is the very method and "knowing what they're doing" that you're saying doesn't exist.

[GDC7]

> The strategies change constantly and are arb'ed away

Don't strategies change constantly and are arbitraged away in the NFL too?

And yet Tom Brady is always in the Super Bowl and is on the record for never having a losing season and 3 distincitve Hall of Fame worthy carrers.

I insist on Tom Brady because you'd never say that he looks like he knows what he's doing, even though his numbers compared to peers are even more impressive than Simons'

That's because he doesn't look the part. He looks like the lucky jock, same thing with that French lady who lived to 123, she looks like the person who simply won the genetic lottery.

Simons "looks and feels" like the elder statesman math genius who knows what he is doing. In reality him (very much like the rest of us) can't even predict what thought will he have 10 seconds into the future, let alone predict if that thought will lead to a viable idea and if that idea will lead to a successful execution and if that execution will lead to a great result.

Again if he's confident that he knows the formula to reach extreme financial success, then why doesn't he proceed to make the experiment of going back to zero or negative net worth and then try to get to top of the Forbes list again? Every billionaire claiming that luck had nothing to do with their success should do this small experiment and repeat it 10 or 20 times, in order to back their claim.

In reality Simons is so sure of not knowing that he gets paranoid when a couple of weeks go by without Medallion making money, and if a week of intense bleeding happens he just pulls the plug on Medallion, like he did during the 2007 meltdown.